At fifteen, I rose to a strange surface, finally
took a deep compelling breath of weightless air.
It was freedom. No different from rebirth, it became
a sea-change that left me mute and gasping for you.
It took me ten years, then, to stop holding my breath,
to remember how to sing, when every step was
disjointing agony. Still, I learned how to run away.
Too many years now have passed for us, for my
seaweed-tangled hair all the colors of sunset
to lure you home. I want to live in deeper
waters now. I am so tired of walking on knives,
so tired of bloody footprints marking this dance,
that I could lie down right here, regardless of
any storm that might blow through. Damp
soothes dark circles stamped around green eyes,
and I can dissolve
into rough scratching brown-sugar sand,
from sticky sea foam into airy oblivion.
